The olds…

A few unphilosophical items picked up over the last month or so:

• The end of info-mac
  It’s odd to be nostalgic about something that was once part of the radiant future. Adam Engst, the author of Tidbits, a long-running newsletter on the Macintosh and things related to it, announces the end of info-mac (see also Gordon Watts’s now-ended weblog at Quantum Diaries).

  

  When the Mac first started in 1984, the only method of distribution for software was floppy disks. If you wanted to try out some shareware, you either picked up a compilation of some sort from a user group or had one sent by mail, with stamps and all that, from the developer. Later, when dial-up access through Compuserve or AOL became common, you could—at some cost—download software from various bulletin boards. Info-mac was one of the first. Now services like MacUpdate and VersionTracker fulfill that function, and many programs will check for updates of themselves. Bugfixes and small improvements can be distributed immediately. The old machinery of versions, often heavily promoted, costing hundreds of dollars (as Adobe’s do) now seems sluggish and superfluous.
• Reclaim Democracy
  Not long ago I expressed skepticism about corporate personhood. If, as Milton Friedman argues, corporations (or rather corporate executives) have no other legitimate aim than to generate profit for stockholders, I see no reason why such an entity should be granted any of the rights granted to people in our Constitution. No free speech, no campaign contributions. Reclaim Democracy includes documents on the history of corporate personhood, news items, and links to organizations campaigning against corporate personhood.
• Anthropic arguments
  Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong surveys some recent attempts at anthropic cosmology by Frank Wilczek, Max Tegmark, and Anthony Aguirre. Woit is skeptical about the claims of string theory; not surprisingly, he finds anthropic arguments wanting. (See also Fabian Besnard at mathéphysique.)
• Earmarks
  

  Source: Lazlo Kovacs
  More specifically, early modern “earmarks”. Items on cultural history. For example: reading machines, Agostino Ramelli’s in particular. I wish I had one. I wish I had space for one.
• A tasteful grey
  Why is the brain segregated into white and grey matter? The answer, it seems, is speed.
• Feuilles de route
  Thierry Beinstingel. Une “tentative d’exposition du travail littéraire à la vue de tous”.
• François Truffaut’s grave
  From john© at Flickr. Truffaut died in 1984.